Baghdad, Iraq – Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki voiced frustration with both President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday, saying their recent criticism of the Iraqi government probably helped the “terrorists.”

Al-Maliki, whose relationship with the United States is strained, was especially upset about Rice’s comment last week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when she said that al-Maliki’s government is working on “borrowed time.”

“Such statements give moral boosts to the terrorists and push them towards making an extra effort and making them believe that they have defeated the American administration, but I can tell you that they haven’t defeated the Iraqi government,” he said during a meeting with a handful of reporters.

The interview was al-Maliki’s first public comments since Bush announced last week that he’s sending 21,500 additional American troops to Iraq. The Times of London posted audio of the interview on its website.

Al-Maliki also criticized Bush for saying that the chaotic execution of Saddam Hussein looked like a “revenge killing” during an interview Tuesday with PBS’s Jim Lehrer.

“I would like to correct President Bush that Saddam, that person, was not subjected to any act of revenge, any physical attack,” al-Maliki said. “It was a judicial process that ended with him executed or sentenced to death according to Iraqi law, which sentences such criminals to death.”

Al-Maliki said he thought Bush was responding to news media pressure. “I know President Bush and I know him as a strong person who does not get affected by the media pressure, but it seems that the pressure … led to the president giving this statement.”

Al-Maliki’s relationship with the United States has been deteriorating for months over various issues, including control of the military forces in Iraq, the strategy for fighting the war and U.S. killings of Iraqi civilians.

On Wednesday, in what may have been a sign of the state of relations between the U.S. and al-Maliki, Rice flew from Kuwait to Europe directly over Baghdad but didn’t stop to meet with Iraqi officials.

Al-Maliki has come under increasing pressure to disarm Shiite militias allied with his government, especially the Mahdi Army, which is loyal to anti- American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and is believed to be behind the killings of hundreds of Sunnis across the capital. Al-Sadr’s supporters hold five seats in al-Maliki’s Cabinet and form the largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament.

“We will not allow any politicians to interfere with this Baghdad security plan … whether they are Sunnis or Shiites, Arabs or Kurds, militias or parties, insurgents or terrorists,” said al-Maliki, who also warned that once a military crackdown begins, political negotiations will shut down.

“We gave the political side a great chance,” he said, “and we have now to use the authority of the state to impose the law and tackle or confront people who break it.”

Al-Maliki said that if he is supplied with sufficient training and equipment, his security forces could stabilize Iraq enough to allow withdrawal of U.S. forces to begin in three to six months – a period in which Bush’s proposed troop buildup would still be underway. And he said that if U.S. training and supplies had come earlier, lives could have been saved.

But on Wednesday, violence continued to claim lives across Iraq. A suicide car bomber killed 17 Shiites at a teeming Sadr City market, while gunmen in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad shot up a convoy of democracy workers in an ambush that took the lives of an American woman and three bodyguards.

The attack on the marketplace came one day after car bombings killed scores of university students just 2 miles away, indicating that al-Qaeda-linked fighters are bent on a surge of bloodshed as U.S. and Iraqi forces gear up for a fresh neighborhood-by-neighborhood security sweep through the capital.

Although nobody claimed responsibility for either day’s car bombings, such attacks are the hallmark of Sunni militants, who appear to be taking advantage of a waiting period before the security crackdown to step up attacks on Shiites.

The three-car convoy that was ambushed belonged to the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, according to Les Campbell, the nonprofit group’s Middle East director. He said the four dead included an American woman along with three security contractors – a Hungarian, a Croatian and an Iraqi. Two others were wounded, one seriously, Campbell said by phone from Washington. Their names were withheld until their families could be notified.

In all, police reported 70 people killed or found dead in Iraq on Wednesday.

The U.S. military also said two more American soldiers died – one Wednesday after suffering wounds during an operation in the Sunni stronghold of Anbar province west of Baghdad and another who died there Monday.

The Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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